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sparticus-was-wrong


				

				

				

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joined 2022 September 05 11:18:10 UTC
				

				

				

				

				

				

					
				

				

				
				
				

				
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sparticus-was-wrong


								

								

								
								
								

								
							
					
 
				


				

				
				
				

				

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					joined 2022 September 05 11:18:10 UTC
				


				
					

					
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User ID: 533


					
					
					
				

			


					

						
					



		

	

 











			
			

			
			

			




	


		

			
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				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You were open to being convinced here?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But things like the Comey letter seem to just be part of the cycle.  The "September surprise" or whatever it's called.  It happened again with Biden, just this time the FBI choice to help influence on behalf of the democrats instead of against them.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Exactly, especially with things like Nate Silver taking tremendous heat for suggesting a Trump win was barely within the margin of error (edit: instead of completely mathematically impossible).  That makes it at least appear as though most media outlets saw the polls as propaganda and not reporting tools.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you waited until everyone was already conditioned not to speak their mind then it wouldn't matter if they did ban theMotte, it would effectively be dead anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm personally strongly against "woke"-ism, but did Tolkien exclude black elves?  Did he mention their colour at all?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I don't think that's really true.  I would give a listen to this video.  There is an index in the description, the person to listen to is Dr. Mike Israetel.  From what I've understood from him, if you keep the doses low you don't get most of the bad effects but you will see benefits.


People doing large amounts to look good on instagram is obviously terrible and deadly but that doesn't mean there is no proper way to use steroids.  After all, we do use them for plenty of common medical applications.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I think the issue is that IQ is measuring how intelligent one has managed to become.  But racists like to use it to determine what one is capable of becoming.  There was a very interesting case of the Dan Everett and the Piraha amazonian tribe (I can't find the article now, I believe it was in the Times or similar but it was more than a decade ago).  He claimed that the tribe had no numbers in their language (only "many", "few") etc. and were completely incapable of learning to count.... if they learned after about 16 years of age.  If they learned before then they could count just fine.


Of course there is much more evidence than this about forming connections before a certain age, etc.  My point is that even if Africa truly has "naturally" low IQs, this is almost certainly do to with education and if that were fixed the IQs would rise.  So again, the issue is that certain people try to look at IQ and point at something genetic but that's not remotely implied by IQ unless you could ensure the study group had the exact same education as the higher groups.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I'm not sure who's really doing what but everything I hear and see about Harris, she's even less competent than he is.  I doubt she's allowed to even be involved in any meaningful decisions.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I had to start using them because everything is just simply too slow without it.  Sites now feel like they have trackers in every pixel of every, otherwise static, page.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
People will find a way to game it.  Ads are just one of the many cat/mouse games.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


Using ad-blockers is antisocial behavior and should be discouraged or banned wherever possible.




People are "voting with their feet", as they always have.  As long as there have been ads people have been trying to escape them.  When VCRs came out with a record function the first (only?) use I heard about from everyone was recording shows you want to watch and actually consuming them later so you could skip the ads.


Just because you like a certain financial model doesn't mean you have some right to it.  I despise it, and given how much effort people are willing to invest to avoid ads, I think a strong argument can be made that it's simply incorrect.  Content creators also don't have any right to making a living via their content.  People do not want ads, for the most part, so if they can't find a way to sell their product without the ad model then it's just another business that failed like millions of others.




See the decline of the newspaper for what content creation looks like without advertising dollars:




Paid news content indeed lost to free content.  I don't think that proves the ad model is somehow superior.  People were happy to read news when they could ignore the ads and pages loaded fast enough.  I suspect people might be more open to paying for news again now if a reasonable micro-transaction model existed, except that the news has gotten so poor it's hard to justify paying anything for most of it.




but not viewing any ads that pay for the content you consume is just expecting the world to provide you with something free of charge.




I don't expect it.  But they do it.  Is your expectation truly that I sit there and try to concentrate on some advertisement which I've already seen (well, had playing in the background while I wait for my content to start again) dozens or even hundreds of times before because of... I don't know, some capitalism-reglious piety?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
If you don't mind, I would actually like to speak to the health aspect:


My wife and I tried a vegan diet.  We planned to go for a month and see how we felt and possibly keep it up for a while if we experienced the results some people were claiming.  In reality we lasted less than 7 days.  The issue is not that the claims we heard were lies, they may have been true but we needed to stick with it longer.  The issue was not that vegan meals are somehow less healthy or taste bad or anything.  The issue was the effort.  If you eat a standard diet, even a vegetarian one you will manage to almost accidentally get all the stuff you need to the point that nothing bad is going to happen for years (or maybe never: maybe something not related to your diet gets you instead).  With a vegan diet this takes radically more effort and we simply weren't in a position to put in this effort.


For me, I did find the health aspects compelling: I do get all kinds of injuries working out, so if this is some kind of inflammation that happens less (or not at all) on a plant based diet that would be sufficient reason for me to switch.  I'm not moved by the arguments about ethics.  Animals should be treated better than they are but you can already signal your concern about this by purchasing products that send these signals (even if the product is lying, you're still sending a signal by purchasing it).


Interestingly I did feel more alert, but I guess this was because I can only drink coffee with milk and all the milk replacements tasted so awful in coffee I just gave it up instead.  The meals we did eat were fantastic.  My wife just didn't have time to break out a spreadsheet and ensure that all the really important stuff (e.g. calcium) was being sufficiently covered (which absolutely can be, just not by accident) and I was scared to continue on a diet where some critical things might be entirely absent.  We could probably have gone on for a few more weeks as we were without any permanent damage but even what she was doing was just a lot more effort and clearly not sustainable no matter the health effects.


EDIT: I guess that's not steel man but it's a practical truth for us and probably plenty of others as well.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
These days, we prefer the name "linguistic relativity hypothesis".  Sapir-Whorf has some ugly ties to the Nazi's: they incorrectly used the theory as evidence for Aryan superiority (which is silly if you know German and some other language).  Their usage was ridiculous but, like pedophiles, just the mention of their name taints the subject, hence the name change (and, of course, it more accurately states what the theory is about).


I should do a better job of keeping various articles that discuss the theory as it's kind of a pet favourite of mine.  In my own life I've noticed Swiss-german native speakers tend to have a problem distinguishing smell and taste.  They use the same word for both.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Personally I don't believe it's all that needed on Reddit.


Years ago I noticed something interesting related to GMO products.  You could be in the most obscure sub you could think of and if you just mentioned GMO is a negative light at all, suddenly you'd get a 3 page post citing 100's of "scientific papers" proving how safe, or even healing GMO meat was, how anti-science you were, how evil, how much of a  Nazi, etc.  Pretty much the exact same post no matter where you were, but different accounts (as far as I cared to look anyway).  Then if you brought something up (e.g. "yea but literally all of those papers you cite are from GMO companies?") then you might get silence for a bit, then seemingly instantaneously all over the site there would be a package response to that.  It was such a bizarre phenomena but it was really like Beetlejuice: say "GMO sucks!" and they would appear.


Then came the 2016 election.  All of the mainstream news subs were pro Bernie and hostile to Hillary (and to Trump of course, though he had that crazy meme sub at that point).  Then Hillary won the primary and I saw the exact same thing happen with Hillary.  The same Beetlejuice affect.  You could be in /r/rollerskatesforpeoplewith3legs and say "those are cool skates but they remind me of Hillary Clinton and she's just not likable" and out comes the canned posts with all the exact same message stated the exact same way (e.g. "Most qualified person to ever run for president"... uh, what about a president running for a second term, wouldn't they be more qualified?).  Highly aggressive.  But this time it wasn't one or two it could be dozens of people or more.  What made it stand out to me was how fast and how radical this changed.  The die hard "Bernie or nobody" people seemed to literally disappear.  Of course they were there but suddenly they were downvoted to oblivion.


I personally think reddit these days is 80% bots and "call centres" making comments.  So there's no need to censor the site directly, just put backroom restrictions on what the call centres and bots are allowed to push.


NOTE: The above is purely from memory and I'm a human so some of it won't have actually happened how I remember it now but I think it gets the point across of what I was seeing and why I have come to this conclusion.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
It needs to be clear that the existence of the "Slippery Slope" fallacy does not mean all Slippery Slope arguments are fallacies.  Slippery Slopes do happen and it's a very common tactic, in fact.  The fallacy is along the lines of your example but suggesting that censorship, once successful will expand is not a fallacy it's the most likely outcome.  It's also an outcome we've literally watched in history on multiple occasions.  Once you've been able to stop people saying something small you don't like hearing, why would you stop?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
But what happened to all the people who were pro-Bernie and hated Clinton literally hours before?  They should have still been there.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
I know what you mean and I saw that too but there was a certain kind of post, kind of a schema or template that appeared all over.  Same arguments, same links (literally 20 or 30 or more), same reactions, same tone, different user name.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You may not need it, but it seems highly unlikely to me that various actors wouldn't be out there trying to insure their voice wins out.  Look at Twitter: the bot count seems to be higher than previously thought.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
You've entirely missed the point.  It doesn't matter if GMOs are good or not.  Based on the obscurity of the subs I saw this occur in and near identical posts (I remember going and checking similar posts because I initially thought it was the same person) demonstrates pretty well that it was bots/astroturfing.  Which was what my post was about.


Second of all, the issue with GMOs are not really about if it's healthy or not.  The problem is companies owning DNA and we've already seen ugly fall out from this.  It will only get worse.  I'm not prepared to advocate a total ban on all patents, as some do, but I think we should at least be able to say that DNA must be public information and cannot be patented.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
Putting untested technology in your body completely unnecessarily (SK already had COVID) most certainly is a terrible imposition.  And that was the state back then, now we know it wouldn't have changed anything anyway.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 24, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					
In your case, why not just lie that you got it and not get it?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


So GRRM just ragequit and said the whole thing works differently, that in Westeros your paternal family "type" will always predominate over another or something like that, because magic or whatever.




I wouldn't call that rage quitting.  I'd say this is the correct response.  Why would a world that has dragons, walking dead people, tree people and so on follow earthen genetics?  Do people in that world even have DNA?  The way the story is presented it very much "feels" like Ned's discovery (actually Jon Arryn's) is correct and for the reasons he stated.


It would also be plausible that families have some kind of "magic".  How else is one line able to manage to hold a position of power for thousands of years?  Do we have an analog to that in our world?


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


otherwise you'd expect 1 in 4 of them to be lighter.




But why would you expect this?  Why are we assuming earthen genetics?  What genetics do the fire breathing dragons have?  What are the genetics of the children of the forest?  For the "others"?  It's just as likely as black hair being a Baratheon "curse" that all Baratheon offspring will always have forever.


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


For the same reason something like 90% of things on this world seem to work the way they did in medieval Europe?




Actually this is counter to your point.  The reason 90% of the things in ASoIaF work like the medieval Europe we know is because for the things he doesn't care about, he left them as they are (e.g. he didn't make a new gravity).  But the things he did care about, he changed.  For example, the people ride horses but some people ride dragons.  This is generally how any fantasy story would be written because no one wants to read some text explaining every possible aspect of a universe because the author changed everything.  Fantasy is like basically doing a "fork" of reality to save time and help prevent confusion (e.g. "how does gravity work in this universe again?")


This concept of a magical "biological seed" is pretty inherent to the plot.  Incest doesn't work the same either.  In our world you would expect centuries of inter-breeding to result in terrible deformities.  What they get is beautiful people who are sometimes insane.


In the book Ned used the "biological seed" evidence first and from there uncovered the rest because it wasn't even particularly well hidden (everyone at court but the King seemed to know already).


				

				

						

							

								
							

						


						
					

				
			


			

	


			
			
				

			
		

	






		

			
			
				Culture War Roundup for the week of October 31, 2022
			
		

	

	

	

		
			

			

				

			

		

			


				

					


But that argument equally undermines the original complaint that it doesn't make sense for Valyrians to all have platinum blonde hair but different skin colors. Maybe the definitely blood-magic evil sacrifice thing that makes valyrians what they are doesn't impact skin color, who knows?




We shouldn't use the show to make assumptions about the book.  The show could be using an entirely different rule set (or, more likely, not caring about the story or any underlying consistency at all).